How to work around broken links and visible “Machine generated alternative text”issues with images from MS-OneNote in Windows Live Writer

Problem: Sometimes when you use Windows Live Writer (2012) to post images copied from MS-OneNote (2010, 2013), the result (on WordPress) can get messed up, like so (post has since been fixed as described below):

The image is missing (“src=” link broken).

The “alt=” text is visible instead (and you did not want to post this “alt=”text anyway. (MS-OneNote OCRs images to make the text therein searchable; this text is put into the “alt”when pasting from MS-OneNote).

which it links in the “src=” tag, and links the thumbnail image to the full-size original image.

If something – unclear what – prevents this conversion, Unfortunately, this is not obvious from the “edit” tab view or elsewhere within Windows Live Writer. But when posted, will result in “Machine generated alternative text” from MS-OneNote in place, but even break the image src link: .

What exactly triggers (and would allow you to force) a successful conversion within Windows Live Writer I do not know. However, there is a simple:

Workaround:

After pasting your images, be patient : The trick seems to be to give Windows Live Writer enough time (more apparently if you have pasted multiple images) to finish

Things you can look for in Windows Live Writer to make sure the conversion is finished:

edit tab: you can tell the difference by the resizing of the image on the edit tab:

before:

after (= conversion finished):

source code tab: A somewhat radical solution, but here beneficial is that the conversion removes the imported “alt” text of the image.